The New York Times On PayWall, Group Buying; Twitter Going Small; AdKeeper Adds Brands

The New York Times issued a press release to reiterate NY Times CEO Janet Robinson's statement at the Morgan Stanley conference: "The pay model for NYTimes.com is in the final testing phase, and we expect it will launch shortly." Read the release. And, just in time for the pay model, the Times is also about to get in on the group buying rage and launch its own GroupOn-like solution called TimesLimited according to PaidContent's David Kaplan. Read it.

Twitter Going Small

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Twitter has decided to target small and medium-sized advertisers echoing Google's AdWords strategy. The WSJ's Amir Efrati writes, "In January, [former FAN CEO and current Twitter sales chief Adam] Bain began a campaign to enlist more smaller advertisers by letting the direct sales team, which now numbers around 35 people, contact businesses that had previously expressed interest in advertising in Twitter." Read more about the results thus far.

Brands Want To Be Kept

But, do consumers want to keep 'em? That is the question. Nevertheless, Part I appears to be in place as an impressive list has been exposed among "50 major consumer brands" brands that have apparently agreed to be in AdKeeper's program (and press release - no small matter) announcing the next stage of AdKeeper's grand plan. Read about it. AdKeeper continues to go right to the brands with the message. Agencies are largely cut out of the "keep" convo.

More Farmer Update Stuff

The algo update ("Farmer") to Google search, which was meant to curb content farm abuse in Google search engine results pages, is still being understood as the data pours in. Screenwerk's Greg Sterling looks at the winners and losers among local ad companies and says that compared to "Farmer" winners, "The sites on the 'losers. list are of uniformly higher quality and consumer value." Don't bet against the farm.

Targeting With The DMP

Red Aril has released study from a month-long, six million-impression campaign done in conjunction with Catalyst SF and Red Aril's data management platform. The audience targeted on behalf of its client, the University of San Francisco (USF) was "ambitious people under 35 who are interested in continuing education to boost their careers." And the results are.... Read more from the release. And, read the Adotas article with CEO Jim Soss.

Yahoo! About To Pump Up The Cash

Reuters reports Yahoo!'s stake in Yahoo! Japan is about to be liquidated as the company is looking to "sort out its dysfunctional Asian partnerships and free up as much as $8 billion to fight Google and Facebook." Softbank, which already owns 42% is rumored to be the acquirer of Yahoo!'s 35% stake. Read more.

Google Sucking Content

The UK's Telegraph reports that Yelp CEO is none too pleased by what he sees is infringement on the ownership of his site's content by Google. He says, "We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users’ review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google’s position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don’t want them to use our reviews on Places…. But that is not an option for us, and other sites like us – such as TripAdvisor – as we get a large volume of our traffic via Google search..." Is "Places" search or content? Read more.

Looking At Your Inner Seller

Doug Weaver tells sellers on his Upstream Group blog, "Now: take a look at your outbound e-mails and listen to the sound of the voice mails you leave. Are you serving up poison pills? Or is your message the one that’s going stand out like a strategic beacon over a choppy, tactical sea?" Answer: My message is a red, raging f*cking beacon, Doug! Read more.

Legislative Impact On The Ecosystem

DoubleVerify CEO Oren Netzer published his company's response to the recent “The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011” (a.k.a “The Speier bill”)" introduced in the U.S. Congress. A snippet: "The bill is very broad in scope – it includes any type of data collection and use, not just behavioral data, and suggests a mechanism for consumers to opt-out of any type of data collection about them (...). This type of requirement will surely have a significant impact on innovation in the online advertising ecosystem." Read more.

IPG Owns (Some Of) Facebook

A once small investment in Facebook by behemoth ad agency holding company 5 years ago, has now turned into a big, sweet asset. MediaPost's David Goetzl writes, "In 2006, IPG took less than a .05% stake in the private Facebook, which now could be worth close to $200 million." Read more.

Pump Some Ads

If you pull up to a gas station and run across an "action button" while you fill up with unleaded, you might be the lucky recipient of some data-driven, interactive, digital out of home ads from Gas Station TV. Read the release.